Public preferences for rehabilitation versus incarceration of juvenile offenders

Abstract

While juvenile justice policy in the United States has become more punitive in recent years, it remains unclear whether the public actually favors this response in lieu of more rehabilitation-oriented services. Public opinion polling generally shows that the public favors less punitive responses than policymakers often suppose, but significant questions remain about the accuracy of these perceptions generally, and in how they have been assessed in particular. Data from four states (Illinois, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, and Washington) aimed at assessing public preferences for rehabilitation and incarceration as a response to serious juvenile crime indicated that, for the most part, the public was willing to pay more in taxes for rehabilitation than incarceration.

Introduction

Policymakers’ perceptions of public attitudes about youth crime have influenced contemporary juvenile justice policy such that decision-making within the juvenile justice system has become more punitive (Benekos and Merlo, 2008, Zimring, 2005) and punishments more severe (Scott & Steinberg, 2008). Yet, it is not entirely clear the extent to which this belief represents an accurate portrayal of public perceptions (Cullen and Gendreau, 2000, Mears et al., 2007). Although some opinion surveys have found support for getting tougher on juvenile crime and punishing youths as harshly as their adult counterparts (Mears, 2001), more intense scrutiny of these data revealed that the conclusion that there is public support for the harsher treatment of juveniles is based largely on either responses to highly publicized crimes such as multiple-victim school shootings or on mass opinion polls that typically ask a few simplistic questions. An accurate assessment of public perceptions is important because policymakers often justify expenditures for juvenile justice reforms on the basis of popular demand (Nagin, Piquero, Scott, & Steinberg, 2006). In fact, policymakers’ actions on this issue are often based on what they believe the public wishes the response to juvenile crime to be and what they believe will garner support for their re-election. Although “tough-on-crime” rhetoric is thought to attract voters, punitive responses to juvenile crime are far more expensive and often less effective than less harsh, rehabilitative-oriented alternatives (Lipsey, 1992, Scott and Steinberg, 2008, Zimring, 2005). Unfortunately, public opinion is not always accurately measured (Cullen, Fisher, & Applegate, 2000). Minor adjustments in question-wording can greatly influence responses, and as is the case with public opinion research on the death penalty, deeper probing into attitudes about juvenile justice policy often shows that public opinion is much more nuanced than typically portrayed (Scott & Steinberg, 2008).

In a study designed to overcome these limitations, Nagin et al. (2006) assessed public opinion toward juvenile justice policy using an approach that differs from conventional polling, by measuring respondents’ willingness to pay (WTP) for alternative policy proposals, including a comparison of respondents’ WTP for incarceration versus rehabilitation of juvenile offenders who had committed serious violent crimes.¹ Using data from Pennsylvania residents, these authors found that, if promised comparable crime reductions, the public was at least as willing to pay for rehabilitation as incarceration for juvenile offenders, and that their WTP for an early childhood prevention program was also substantial. Further, they found that even individuals who identified themselves as conservative or who supported punitive policies also indicated substantial WTP for rehabilitation and prevention programs.

These results were intriguing, but they remain limited because they emerged from a study of just one state. It remains unclear whether the finding that the public prefers rehabilitation to incarceration is replicable and generalizable to other locales. This study was a 2007 replication of that previous effort, conducted again in Pennsylvania (two years later) and in three other states (Illinois, Louisiana, and Washington) that varied considerably in their demographics, political orientations, and juvenile crime problems. The study employed the same experimental methodology (“contingent valuation”) that permitted a comparison of respondents’ opinions about two juvenile justice policy alternatives that were presented as equally effective. Any observed differences in respondents’ WTP for two policies of equal effectiveness must necessarily indicate a true preference for one over the other, and in this vein sheds more definitive light on public views about juvenile punishment than does more traditional approaches to polling.